The curtain has come down on one of the pioneers of the African LGBTQI+ movement. Emmanuel Kamau or Aunty Ivy as they were popularly known to the community both in Kenya and across Africa, was one of the founder members of the oldest gay group in Kenya ISHTAR MSM, which was founded in 1999. Aunty Ivy had been living in the States for the last twelve years. A resident of Dallas, Texas, Aunty Ivy fell ill in April 2019 and sadly passed on the 17th December 2019, a few days before their 48th birthday.
Aunty Ivy’s footprint extends beyond Kenya’s boundaries and was a friend to many activists across the continent and the world. We remember Aunty Ivy, with a selection of tributes from fellow African activists.
Tribute from Pitts Njane – Executive Director, ISHTAR MSM, Kenya.
I met Aunty Ivy in 2002, and I was in college at that time. I was an HIV volunteer peer educator and in one of our meetings he noticed me and he invited me to a monthly focus group discussion at Liverpool VCT here in Nairobi. This meeting was like an AA meeting where people would tell their coming out stories. There were 20 people at that meeting I was shocked! I loved being in this group of people who were discussing issues on their coming out and problems with their parents. This meeting was chaired by Aunty Ivy and I used to look forward to the meeting. We eventually became friends and he also told me about ISHTAR as he was one of the founders.
When I completed my college, I had a lot of time on my hands and I got to spend part of this with Aunty Ivy. We would walk around the city and he would say hello to so many people. On some days we would go to Uhuru Park, here in Nairobi and meet other guys. Uhuru Park was a hot spot then (meeting area) for gay men. We would go there and just meet other guys and talk.
Back then, there used to be a radio host called Aunty Ivy on the main radio station and she used to offer advice to listeners. If we had any problems we would run to him for advice, and that is how Emmanuel became Aunty Ivy. He would also share the little money that he had if someone was in need. We used to call him our mother. He was a comfort place for us.
When he had his house in Kariobangi South, he would host so many of us boys. In spite of it being a small one-bedroom house, it’s door was always open. Before he went to work he would ensure that there was enough food for everyone for the day!
Aunty Ivy started telling me a more and more about ISHTAR and it wasn’t long before I got involved. I started accompanying him to meetings. One particular time in 2005, we had been invited to a meeting by the National AIDS Control Council, they had heard that there was an MSM group in Nairobi and the directors challenged us to bring around a group 20 MSM to their offices. This was easy for Aunty Ivy because he had a wide network. At the next meeting we showed up with the 20 people and the staff at the offices were shocked. They would stare at us and even came into the meeting room to continue looking at us! Aunty Ivy through her leadership gave me a lot of encouragement and inspiration. He had a big part to play in who I am today.
When we started organising ourselves as the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenyan (GALCK), Aunty Ivy was also involved. We were given the opportunity to march with other organisations during the 2005 World Aids Day march in Nairobi. There were five of us and we walked with our banner. There was Deo, Po, Aunty Ivy and myself. I can’t remember who the other person was.
During the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, we were given a tent at the venue. We called it the G-Spot! We mobilised members of the community to come and talk to people and we were busy! The tent was very popular. We also did a lot of media interviews. I did the radio interviews and Aunty Ivy did the TV ones. On one of the days, we had a march around the venue. It was the first time I remember shouting gay in public, but we marched. We were shouting gay, lesbian and trans in public and in Kenya. We got a lot of local and international coverage. We were the main news item on the evening bulletins and also the following day on the radio stations and in the newspapers. Back then we had not received any training on security and so we got a lot of backlash. Because Aunty Ivy featured prominently, he and another activist Larry came under fire from their respective families due to the coverage they received. Following this, he received death threats from the vigilante group Mungiki, who were present in the neighbourhood of Dandora that he was living in then. He was forced to go into hiding and eventually decided to leave Kenya for his safety, that is how he ended up in the States.
Tribute from Victor Mukasa – Executive director at Kuchu Diaspora Alliance-USA
When we talk about the history of the African LGBTQ+ human rights movement we cannot forget the name Aunty Ivy, we cannot forget the name Emmanuel Kamau and the role played by Kenyan in making the movement what it is. The African queer movement with its vibrancy is what it is, because of the earlier activist in Africa and one of those people is Emmanuel Kamau.
The first time I heard of Emmanuel was through the now-defunct Behind The Mask that was based in South Africa. I was trying to connect the newly created movement in Uganda with other activists in Africa. Those were the days of Fanny Ann Eddy in Sierra Leone, Davis Mac-Iyalla in Nigeria, Wendy Isaacs in South Africa, and this is was in the 2000s. I met her in 2004 after we had formed Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG). This encounter was at a convening in Jinja, Uganda that brought together the LGBTQ+ groups in East Africa. That is where I met Aunty Ivy. She was a diva. She was an aunt to me. She was the first person I met who had gone through similar travails like me as an activist. I remember telling her how I used to walk long distances to my meetings with a shoe brush tucked into my socks and I would polish them along the way. I wanted people to think that I had just stepped out of a matatu/minibus. When I was telling her this she was laughing and she told me to stop telling her their story. She told me that she has seen days of hunger. She recounted how she too had walked to a particular meeting and she had not had a proper meal in two days. When she got there the man was having a cup of tea, this cup of tea stole her focus to the point that she started daydreaming about the cup of tea. The man noticed this and asked Aunty Ivy if everything was alright? Aunty Ivy told him the truth, that he not eaten anything for days. That cup of tea was offered to Emmanuel and the meeting was postponed to another day.
There was another time, she told me that they lost the sole of one of her shoes when she was walking. Aunty Ivy said she had no choice to but remove the other sole in order to walk properly. She laughed at how the shoes that were made to have some height were now flat. Emmanuel and many other activists back then were poor, but that didn’t stop us from organising.
Those of us early activists had a very strong connection even though there weren’t organised under an umbrella. When we met we shared our stories and it was interesting how almost all of us would walk to meetings, or save money so that we could go to cyber cafes to work on proposals or send emails. We were poor, but we were very close with the likes of Davis, Wendy, there was Fanny-Ann Eddy’s successor from Sierra Leone and others. Though physically we were miles apart, we were united in our struggles and purpose!
The bond that was birthed with Emmanuel back then in 2004 was amazing. I have gone through many emotions as I’ve read old emails that we shared. Emmanuel was part of that pregnancy that birthed what exists today and we cannot forget his contribution to the queer rights movement in Africa.
Tribute from Nguru Karugu, Public Health Innovations
We have lost a giant in the loss of Emmanuel Kamau or as he was lovingly referred to as “Aunty Ivy”. It came as a terrible shock having only spoken to him a year earlier in 2018. He was larger than life yet one of the humblest people I had come across. He played a major role in inviting me into the LGBTI community in Kenya and ensuring that I get more directly engaged with the community in ways that have me fully engaged with the community still over a decade later.
I first met Emmanuel while visiting Kenya from my base in the US in 2006 and interviewed him for an International funder who wanted to support emerging East African LGBTI organizations. Emmanuel’s smile and welcoming posture immediately made me feel welcomed back into the fold even though I had been out of the country for over 20 years. With my background in public health, Emmanuel immediately got me to work with Ishtar MSM, the oldest and most established MSM CBO at the time. He requested I join them with their early discussions with the government on the inclusion and better articulation of Most At-Risk Populations and particularly Bi-Gay-MSM needs in the national strategic plan. Now over 14 years later the Kenya National Strategic Framework clearly states and provides guidance and programming on MSM and other key populations and the Ministry of Health through the National AIDS and STI Program (NASCOP) has an active Key Population program that continues to expand services to KP populations including GBMSM. Emmanuel would be proud.
He would also be very proud at how far ISHTAR MSM, has come. Today, it has a government certified full-fledged clinic providing comprehensive HIV and health services to GBMSM in Nairobi. While Emmanuel had to leave Kenya due to threats on his life, his legacy here in Kenya is intact and the impact of his work of ensuring that BGMSM citizens have access to health care and rights as entitled to them under the constitution will live forever.
Rest in Peace till we meet again my friend!
Tribute from Carlos Idibouo, House of Culture and Human Diversity, Cote D’Ivoire
I met Aunty Ivy back in 2006 in the Gambia at a meeting hosted by what was known as the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, now Outright International. We were actually there for the African Human Rights Commission meeting. We were staying at the same hotel and every afternoon at around 4 pm people would come to the hotel to swim. We were intimidated by this and didn’t want to expose ourselves. Plus, the environment in the Gambia was homophobic. But one afternoon and after our meetings, Aunty Ivy went out to the pool in her bikini and jumped into the swimming pool. Everyone else who was in the pool got out and Aunty Ivy shouted, ‘Yay, I have the pool to myself’. It might sound funny, but what I take from the is that someone like Aunty Ivy is one of those individuals who showed us how to claim our space and to affirm our right to be in whatever space and that we have the right to express ourselves.
Tribute from Revd Jide Macaulay aka Momma. – House of Rainbow.
I first got to know Emmanuel Kamau late 2009, social media allowed us to link in and we became friends. Always talking about liberating LGBTIQ folks in Africa and beyond. Emmanuel struggled with his Christian faith and also the idea of being gay and a person of faith terrified him. But our relationship grew over the years. I shared with him my journey of faith and how we started the House of Rainbow in Nigeria. We shared common pathways in life as Africans, gays and as Christians.
When he moved to the USA, he found the opportunity to join communities of people of faith, seeking the appropriate guidance and training and becoming a minister of religion in the local church.
In Kenya, he was a principal partner and contributor with Other Sheep and he helped many people locally and beyond on understanding the ineffable love of God for them.
His death came to me as a shock as I was not aware of any illness or circumstances leading to his death. I believe he did his best to be himself and share examples with many around the world. We joked and chatted a lot when we had the time. The man popularly known as Aunty Ivy is no more and the LGBTIQ communities in Africa, especially in Kenya, would miss him. Those he had met abroad and his travels will miss him. The communities he serves will miss him. May his precious soul rest in peace.
More love.
Tribute from David Kuria – Kuria Foundation, Kenya
It is hard to write this tribute, both because it is about Emmanuel Kamau who is such an iconic figure in the Kenyan movement. In his memory, I guess I can tell about the impact and the enormous change he brought to my life.
I met Emmanuel Kamau by accident. We had just completed catholic priesthood studies and our superiors in their wisdom decided in preparation for perpetual/final vows, we should have some laypeople at a nine-day retreat; and in their wisdom, a youth group from one of the catholic parishes in Nairobi was what Jesus would have ordered (privately we knew or guessed, the intention was to bring young girls to tempt us before the final step to priesthood)! But as luck would have it, Emmanuel was part of the youth group – I really do not know how we spotted each other (those were the days of internal gaydar), but it did happen and for me, for the first time in my entire life it occurred to me that one can be gay and live a normal life.
You see up to until that time I thought if you had what they called in the church disordered “homosexual feelings” then you could really only really just be celibate. After meeting Emmanuel however, I got that lightbulb moment that so radically transformed my life. After the nine-day retreat, I knew it was not a matter of if but when I would leave the seminary life. That is the radical touch that Emmanuel had on people’s lives. I know many others can tell of such radical impact!!!
Tribute from Davis Mac-Iyalla – Interfaith Diversity Network of West Africa, Ghana
Dear Emmanuel,
You know what they say,
God only takes the best.
Everything happens for a reason,
Even if we may not agree.
Just promise to look after us,
And if you can,
Save a spot up there for me.
The thought of never seeing you again brings tears to my eyes,
And even more so,
Because all of this was such a surprise.
But we should never question what God has planned,
sometimes it’s not meant for us to understand.
So as we sit here and mourn the loss of a beloved friend,
We have to keep telling ourselves that we will meet again.
